A Dream of Independence
In 1877, John Bright told a meeting of the Manchester India Association that he had wanted to put India on the path to independence nearly twenty years before.
1877
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
In 1877, John Bright told a meeting of the Manchester India Association that he had wanted to put India on the path to independence nearly twenty years before.
1877
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
In 1858, government of India’s various Presidencies in Madras, Bombay, Bengal and other centres was taken out of the hands of the East India Company and vested in the Crown — or as John Bright put it, ‘a Governor-General and half-a-dozen eminent civilians in the city of Calcutta.’ Nineteen years later, he told a meeting in Manchester that he had wanted it done very differently.
abridged
I SAID then that I did not believe,* as I have said now, that a Government in Calcutta could ever efficiently direct the affairs of that country or legislate for it; that it could not do its duty to nations speaking twenty languages, comprising, as it is said, now more than 200,000,000 of people — one-sixth the population of the globe.*
I argued that it was necessary, and would some time become imperative, that the Government of India should be so changed that it should be divided into five or six separate and entirely independent presidencies;* that by that means the government of every district should be brought nearer to the people. And thus if the time should come — and it will come — when the power of England, from some cause or other, is withdrawn from India, then each one of these states would be able to sustain itself as a compact, as a self-governing community.
* In a speech in the House of Commons on June 24th, 1858.
* In 2019, the population of India was believed to stand at a little over 1.35bn, almost a fifth of the global population. For comparison, in 2020 the population of the European Union stood at about 0.45bn, with 23 official languages.
* See a map of British India in 1880 at Wikimedia Commons, showing the various Presidencies and Provinces at the time.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Why did Bright think the new Government in Calcutta would find its job difficult?
Because India was too large and diverse.
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
The East India Company ran India. The Indian Mutiny took place in 1857. In 1858 Parliament handed India over to the Crown.